


Crisis Muffins

by flowersheep



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-15 14:50:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7226893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersheep/pseuds/flowersheep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin needs to stop having crises at ungodly hours of the morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crisis Muffins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Val_Creative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/gifts).



> Birthday present for my lovely friend. Happy birthday Rie!

The first thing Merlin did when he got home from the strip club sometime after two AM was call his dad and say, “Dad, I’m having a crisis.” Several seconds passed before his dad replied.

“...Okay. Let me just-” And then the line went dead, which Merlin assumed meant his dad had dropped his phone and accidentally hung up while crawling out of bed and would be there as soon as he could.

The second thing Merlin did when he got home from the strip club sometime after two AM was hop in the shower to make sure he wouldn’t smell like a prostitute when his dad showed up. Then he started baking. Merlin blamed his mum for his tendency to bake when under any kind of stress. She used to fill her kitchen with all kinds of confections whenever things weren’t going well. Although his dad wasn’t entirely blameless for that habit either. Merlin still remembered going downstairs in the middle of the night during that tumultuous time when his parents had decided to divorce but still lived together and found his dad making omelets. Apparently stress baking/cooking was hardwired into his genetic code.

The recipe was nothing special, just one of those premix things he kept around for nights like this when he desperately needed something sweet and comforting and couldn’t be bothered baking from scratch. He’d just put what turned out to be cinnamon roll flavored muffins in the oven when his front door opened.

“Can you stop having crises at ungodly hours?” Balinor asked as he came into the kitchen and slumped into the nearest chair.

“It’s not my fault my friends are all disgusting late night party animals.” Merlin frowned, eyeing the way his dad didn’t even look fully awake. “You didn’t drive here, did you?”

“I did.” Balinor gave the giant thermos in his hand a little shake. “This is coffee. Now what happened?”

Right, the crisis. “I had sex,” Merlin blurted. Balinor sighed.

“Merlin, please-”

“With Arthur.”

Balinor paused. “Is that the straight guy you had a crush on a few years ago?”

“No, that was Lance, who just married Gwen two months ago. I’m talking about Morgana’s brother. Blond hair, blue eyes, smuggest fucking arsehole to ever live?”

“Oh. Him.” Balinor took a worryingly large gulp of his coffee. “Is _he_ straight?”

Merlin ran his hands through his hair and made a distressed sound. “I thought so! But then tonight we went to a strip club- Gwaine’s idea- and we got really drunk and somehow we started arguing about which one of us would make a better stripper-”

Balinor snorted. “No one who heard this would ever believe you’re in medical school.”

“Shut up. But so Arthur decided to prove that he would be the better stripper by actually stripping, which he was surprisingly good at considering he tripped and almost face planted right in Morgana’s crotch when he got up, and he was just like rubbing all over me-”

“Can you please skip ahead? I really don’t need to know anything beyond your friend’s straight brother did a strip tease for you and, from the sound of it, gave you a lap dance. In fact, I’m sure I don’t even need to know that much.”

Merlin obligingly skipped over the rest of the strip tease and the lap dance. And the ensuing sex. The more he thought about it, the more he realized those weren’t really things he wanted to share in explicit detail with his father. “But so after…” Merlin made a vague gesture in the air. “...Yeah, it was all just really awkward and neither of us was saying anything and, like I said, I’d thought up until that point that Arthur was straight because he only ever talked about girls so I was trying to figure out a way to ask if this meant Arthur wasn’t as straight as he thought-”

“Entirely possible. With the amount of bi and pan erasure in society it doesn’t surprise me that most people-”

“ _Dad_ ,” Merlin interrupted. “Please, I don’t need another lecture on how all bisexual and pansexual identities are valid. I am well aware that you are bi and, in case you’ve forgotten, so am I. This is not about the validity of bisexuality. It’s about the fact that I fucked my friend’s previously thought to be straight brother and now I have no idea what to do!”

“Because you have a crush on him,” Balinor guessed.

Merlin took a deep breath, ready to tell his dad just how ridiculous that was, but instead what came out was, “Yes. A massive fucking crush.”

“See? I was right. The straight guy you had a crush on. _Still_ have a crush on. Or not so straight, I guess.”

The oven timer went off, saving Merlin from having to continue that particular line of conversation, and he went to pull the muffins out. Just as he was setting the tray on the stovetop to cool his front door slammed open. Arthur stormed into the kitchen, looking determined, and Merlin’s brain sort of short circuited. All he could think as he stood there with an oven mitt still on one hand was that if Arthur had put a hole in his wall with the front door then he was going to kill him.

“Look, Merlin, about what happened earlier,” Arthur began. “At first I just wanted to forget the whole thing, but then-”

“Arthur,” Merlin tried to interrupt, darting glances at his father, but Arthur wasn’t to be stopped.

“No, Merlin, I need to say this. After we came out of the bathroom and you left Morgana dragged me out back into the skeeviest alley I have ever been in in my entire life and made me explain exactly what was going on, starting with the argument, then the strip tease, the lap dance- actually I’m not sure why she needed that explained because I’m pretty sure she was there for that, but that’s beside the point-”

“Arthur.”

“It’s just, I’ve always thought of myself as straight, you know? I just figured all these feelings for you were just friendship, right? Really strong friendship because we’ve known each other for so long. Just- just bro stuff, you know?”

“Oh my god, Arthur _please_ -”

“But then Morgana kicked me because she doesn’t know how to show affection like a normal person and pointed out that straight guys don’t generally give their friends lap dances and then go fuck them in the nearest bathroom stall and I realized-”

“Arthur, my dad is sitting _right there_.”

“Exactly, I realized that your dad-” Arthur froze and slowly turned to face the final occupant of the small kitchen. “Is sitting right there,” he finished weakly. “Hello Mr. Emrys.”

“Hello Arthur,” Balinor said calmly. He stood. “Well, I think this is my cue to skedaddle. But first could I get a few muffins?” Merlin moved on autopilot- half convinced this night was just a bizarre dream he was going to wake up from any second now- to pry a few muffins out of the tray and throw them in a ziploc bag. He turned to see his dad placing a hand on Arthur’s shoulder and saying, “Hey, you should know that your feelings and your sexuality are valid, no matter what they are.”

“Dad,” Merlin groaned. “Arthur doesn’t need the lecture either. Please just take you muffins and go.”

“Alright, I'm going. I’m just saying-”

“ _Out_.”

Holding one had up in surrender (the other was still clutching the giant thermos of coffee), Balinor took the muffins and left. Merlin sighed. Then he went to get the rest of the muffins out of the tray because his only other options were awkwardly looking at Arthur or awkwardly avoiding looking at Arthur and neither of those sounded particularly appealing at...whatever ungodly hour of the morning it was now.

“I’m mortified,” Arthur said into the strained silence. “I can’t believe your dad heard all of that.”

“I did try to warn you.”

“True. Wait, why was your dad here?”

Merlin whipped around. “Why are _you_ here?”

“I-” Arthur cleared his throat. “I thought I made that abundantly clear.”

“I was too busy being horrified that you were babbling about all of it in front of my father,” Merlin countered.

Arthur took a deep breath and looked down at the floor. “Look, you know what kind of household I grew up in.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Shut up. My point is that my father isn’t really accepting of any orientation that isn’t straight, you know? I’ve listened to one too many rants about his feelings towards homosexuality and since I found girls attractive I didn’t want to…”

“Rock the boat?”

“Exactly. So I just sort of ignored all the other… feelings and shit that I had towards men. That way it would never be an issue. It was kind of easy, actually.” He looked up at Merlin. “Until you. That’s why I was such an ass to you when we first met. Morgana dragged you over to introduce you to me and all I could think about was how… how pretty and shit you are.”

Merlin stared, uncertain as to how he should respond to that. “...Thanks?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, you do, shut up. And I guess after so long of living in denial about my feelings towards men I just couldn’t wrap my head around that fact that I really am…”

“Bi?” Merlin shook his head. “Holy mother of god my dad was right.”

Arthur frowned. “Right about what?”

“He basically said you’d probably just repressed the part of you that’s attracted to men because of how strong bi and pan erasure is in society. Or at least, he was going to before I stopped him because I’ve been hearing that lecture in different forms since the day I asked him if it really was possible to be attracted to both boys and girls and I really didn’t need to hear it again. He gets very into it.”

Arthur’s frown deepened. “Why does he give you so many lectures on bi erasure?”

“And pan erasure. Because it’s a very important issue to him,” Merlin explained, but Arthur just shook his head, still confused. Merlin rolled his eyes. “Arthur, my dad is bi.” Several seconds of silence followed.

“Wait, really?” Arthur asked. Merlin prayed to any deity that would listen for patience.

“You’ve met one of his boyfriends.”

“I did?”

“Several times. Remember Iseldir?”

“The weird guy who’s nose you almost broke with a door?”

Merlin resisted the urge to go hide in one of his cupboards at the reminder of what was probably one of the most mortifying instances of his life. “Yes, him.”

“Oh. I always wondered why he was at your dad’s flat so much.”

“Well, now you know it’s because they were dating.”

“Huh, you learn something new everyday. Wait, are they still together?”

“No, Arthur that was like five years ago. And all of this is completely beside the point!” Merlin pointed an accusatory finger at Arthur. “You lap danced first.”

“You suggested the bathroom,” Arthur reminded him. Which okay, yes, that was true, but-

“I never would’ve suggested the bathroom if you hadn’t been rubbing yourself all over me and grinding your arse on my crotch!” Merlin argued. “You’re the one who shoved your tongue down my throat!”

“You shoved your hand down my pants!”

“You gave me a blow job!”

“You told me to shove my cock up your arse!”

“You-” Merlin stopped, then snorted. A moment later Arthur did as well. “Okay, we’re both responsible for how this turned out,” Merlin decided. His amusement faded. “The real question is where do we go from here?”

“Forward,” Arthur said with certainty, but Merlin still hesitated.

“Arthur,” he began carefully, “if you need time to come to terms with all of… all of _this_. That would be fine. Understandable, really. You don’t have to jump into it.”

“I don’t need time,” Arthur said, not a trace of doubt in his voice. He eyed Merlin. “Do you? Because you don’t have to just jump into it either. We could take it slow, if you want.”

Part of Merlin wanted to say that yes, he did need some time to come to terms with the fact that the crush he’d been harboring for Arthur for a while now actually had a very real possibility of going somewhere. He was kind of afraid actually. Afraid that this was all some kind of fluke and he’d wake up tomorrow to find that Arthur had just had one shot too many and his severe competitive streak combined with Merlin’s stubbornness had just snowballed into this mess and Arthur had realized upon waking up that he was straight after all. It would be safer just to say no to the whole thing.

But Merlin had to admit, safe hadn’t exactly worked out very well for him in past relationships. He was a bit of a commitment phobe, if he were being honest. It was completely understandable, though, considering his primary example of relationships growing up had been his parents and they weren’t exactly a shining example of commitment. But that didn’t necessarily mean that all their relationships, first with each other, then the ones that had come after, were meaningless or failures, did it?

Merlin knew if he didn’t do this, if he asked for time and let Arthur walk out of his flat tonight, that would be all the excuse he needed to end it before it even started. He didn’t want that. Merlin took a deep breath.

“Fuck it,” he declared, grabbed Arthur by the front of his shirt, and dragged him off to the bedroom. Maybe Arthur would wake up tomorrow and realize this had all been an alcohol fueled mistake. Or maybe he wouldn’t. The only way to find out was to stick it out until the sun came up.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why but I imagine that Balinor has a really old flip phone that he refuses to get rid of despite both his ex wife and his son urging him to update his tech.
> 
> Also if you have never tried cinnamon roll muffins I suggest you do so. They're so. good.


End file.
